Their Mom Complained About Their Cleaning No Matter How Good It Was, So The Siblings Hired Professionals To See How She’d React
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Keeping a house clean can be a source of tension in any family, but did you know cleaning can be used as a way to criticize and control others? I didn’t!
When no amount of effort seems good enough, it’s normal to start asking oneself if the problem really is the cleaning or them.
So siblings who were going through harsh criticism from their mom about their cleaning decided to test whether the problem really was the cleaning by hiring professional help.
Would their mom still complain?
After her reaction, they’re now wondering if they went too far.
Read the full story below.
AITAH for hiring professional cleaners to prove my mom was a spite cleaner?
This is from a few years ago, but it’s come up in arguments lately so I figured I’d get some outside opinions.
My mom is what you might call a spite cleaner. She uses cleaning as a tool to control and nag and wine and whatnot.
My siblings and I bore the brunt of it.
Often she delegated cleanings to a Saturday or Sunday, which we called “hell day”).
She would usually go out to buy food for the week/errands and leave us to it, and it seemed no matter how much cleaning we did she was never happy with the result and the day would end with all of us arguing and upset.
Sometimes we would barely do any cleaning since the end result was the same – her complaining.
They concocted a plan.
Venting to each other outside the house one day, my siblings and I decided to prove she was just complaining for the sake of complaining.
We set up a gofundme to raise funds to pay a local house cleaning company, posing it as something along the lines of ‘help us get a professional house cleaning to surprise our mom!’
And we were able to raise a few hundred dollars mostly from family and friends (who knew our situation), which covered the cost (and a nice big tip for the cleaners from what was left).
So for one cleaning weekend when our mom had shopping plus getting the car looked at, we scheduled a local cleaner to arrive.
The plan went well.
They were 2 very nice women who proceeded to clean the house till it was sparkling (we chatted a bit with them while they were working, one of the ladies had almost 20 years of experience cleaning homes, the other 8).
With their consent, we filmed some clips of them cleaning, saying it was to surprise our mom.
So mom gets home with our uncle who was coming to dinner, and she’s barely in the door, she’s already started complaining about our “usual” subpar cleaning, that either I or my brother didn’t clean the surfaces well enough or that my sister didn’t sweep one spot.
These were repetitive complaints she often said.
Gotcha!
Long story short, we show her the footage, her face gets red and she proceeds to scream at us for embarrassing her in front of her brother, how dare we hire cleaners and have strangers in the house, blah blah.
We argue back that this proves she just weaponizes cleaning.
It’s been a few years since then, after the big blow-up she just did most of the cleaning herself, she never admitted to weaponizing it.
It came up again recently as us “tricking” her and I don’t think we did anything wrong.
AITA?
I had never heard the term “weaponized cleaning” before. Interesting!
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What does Reddit think?
A reader shares their thoughts.
Food for thought.
Deweaponized cleaning.
True.
Same.
It’s very understandable why they wanted to prove their point, and they did.
Hopefully things improve or at least change in that regard after this.
I am still shocked there are people who apparently, whether they realize it or not, use cleaning as a way to control others.
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